Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made a fresh pitch Saturday to retain oversight of small banks, contending that what the Fed learns from that role helps it assess the overall health of the entire U.S. financial system.

In a fresh appeal directly to the Iranian people, President Barack Obama says in an online video that the United States wants more educational and cultural exchanges for their students and better access to the Internet to give them a more hopeful future.

In seeking enough votes to overhaul the nation's health care system, President Barack Obama is telling nervous Democratic lawmakers that their political fates are linked to the bill's passage, discouraging the notion that they can save themselves by opposing it, House members say.

President Barack Obama says small-business owners especially will benefit from a jobs bill that he plans to sign on Thursday. The bill includes about $18 billion in tax breaks and pumps $20 billion into highway and transit programs.

Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter on Wednesday became the first state chief executive to sign a measure requiring his attorney general to sue Congress if it passes health reforms that force residents to buy insurance.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer declined to say Wednesday if Democrats have enough votes to pass historic health care legislation, but hinted that they're poised to use an arcane parliamentary process to get it done.

President Barack Obama predicts Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky and Villanova to make the men's basketball Final Four.

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey must defend a defamation suit over remarks she made about a headmistress at her girls' school in South Africa after a sex-abuse scandal erupted there, a U.S. judge ruled.

If President Barack Obama is looking for a partner to play U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and his daughter in basketball, Connecticut's Maya Moore says she's prepared to serve.

A U.S. consulate employee and her husband were shot to death as they drove in this drug-plagued Mexican city with their baby in the back seat, minutes after gunmen killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two children, officials said Sunday.

The senator trying to rewrite the nation's financial industry rules is dropping plans to create a stand-alone consumer financial protection agency and give a single regulator the power to oversee all banks, according to people familiar with the evolving proposal.